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Monday, June 29, 2015

Review: Little Paris Bookshop

My Rating:

★★★ 1/2

What drew me to The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George was that it's protagonist was an eccentric bookseller that would only sell his books to the right person. No one could waltz onto his book barge and ask for the most current best selling book, they had to be given the right book for their soul.

I absolutely loved that idea so when I had the opportunity to review this book for Blogging for Books, I jumped at the chance. I would recommend before reading this review that you take a look at this excerpt and The Book Apothecary that Read it Forward put together that ties into this book. The website acts as Jean Perdu himself trying to recommend books for each reader. I adored this, and I thought it was a great interactive way to engage the reader into wanting to read this book.

Overall I really liked this book, but at times it fell kind of flat for me. Not completely, just there were moments when I felt really out of my element and I think that mostly stemmed from the difficulty of relating to a character that was both male and twenty years my senior. I don't have the same experiences as Perdu, so I couldn't relate to his pining for his lover Manon.

I also didn't really care for the fact that he pinned for a married woman for twenty years. Maybe that's a very American thing to think, but I just don't care for infidelity at all, which I think is why I don't read a lot of Adult Fiction, because it tends to be a recurring theme.

I did really like the beginning of the novel where Perdu decides to cast off on his book barge with the best-selling novelist Max Jordan. I really liked their dynamic, and I even thought the book was still interesting when they met Cuneo. I was also glad that Perdu finally solves the mystery of who wrote his favorite book, but that was when the book started to get boring for me. I don't know why! Maybe because I didn't really care about Perdu's love affair with Manon so him going to visit her small town didn't really make me feel anything. I felt like the book started to drag at that point, and I was already really disappointed that he had given up his book barge. I was happy with the ending, because at least this one ended on a happy note.

I would still recommend this one and I did really enjoy it and I think other book worms will love how Perdu feels about books. He feels the way a lot of us do and I think that will speak to a lot of different book lovers.